July 23, 2014
The Rational Group, parent company of Pokerstars and Full Tilt, has released details of its charitable donations totalling $560,078 over the past 7 months, mainly benefitting victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines last year. The two operational companies started a player fund with a commitment to match donations made by players on a dollar-for-dollar […]
July 22, 2014
The two biggest league providers in the booming British pub poker market, Red Tooth and The Nuts, have combined under Red Tooth leadership to create a poker structure with 250,000 registered players – ten times larger than any rival in the UK pub poker market. Although the two brands will remain distinct, the alliance will […]
July 20, 2014
Soon after the June 2014 announcement that Amaya Gaming was to acquire Pokerstars parent The Rational Group, the company advised that it had commenced talks with the French regulator ARJEL regarding the impact of the ownership change on the licensing for Pokerstars.fr. After inviting the operator to provide it with details, ARJEL has now indicated […]
July 20, 2014
The organisers of the World Poker Tour have confirmed that the first two stops on Season 2 of the WPT Alpha8 series will be London and Las Vegas. The Palm Beach Casino in London will be the host for the second time for the event, which carries a GBP 60,000 buy-in and will run from […]
July 20, 2014
Swedish high stakes poker ace Viktor Blom may have garnered $500,000 in profits by playing the high stakes tables from home instead of travelling to this years’ WSOP, but his achievement was eclipsed in a single day by Macau internet poker ace Chun Lei “samrostan” Zhou this week. The High Stakes Data Base reports that […]
July 20, 2014
In an initiative apparently spearheaded by California Grand Casino in Northern California, 25 of the Golden State’s 88 poker card rooms have come out in support of legalised intrastate online poker as the legislative debate heats up with an end-August legislative deadline in sight. The 25 operators, including Hollywood Park and Hustler in Los Angeles, […]
July 18, 2014
Newspaper reports in Germany suggest that poker pro Johannes Strassmann (29), who went missing and was later found dead in a Slovenian river (see previous reports) may have been under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. Slovenian officials released information to the media this week revealing that the autopsy on Strassmann’s body had found the presence […]
July 17, 2014
The Rational Group, owners of the widely known Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker online poker brands, have commenced re-branding the latter, dropping the ‘poker’ element to emphasise the more general online gambling nature of the brand going forward. Full Tilt.eu and derivations in various national regulatory jurisdictions such as Spain, Sweden and Italy, reflects the […]
July 17, 2014
Satoshi Poker, a Bitcoin-currency online poker enterprise that was at one time regarded as an up-and-coming competitive threat to its rivals, appears to have fallen on hard times. Posting on the Bit Coin Talk.org forum this week, former owner Bart Van Oort lamented that the new management, whom he identified as Ragnar del Torres, running […]
July 16, 2014
The Isle of Man-based online poker operator Pokerstars has announced the appointment of Kirsty Thompson as head of Pro and Celebrity Marketing. Thompson has been with Pokerstars since 2009 holding a variety of positions, most recently serving as president of the U.K. & Ireland Poker Tour and live rooms. In her new post Thompson will […]